Way back in the day, people used typewriters. They had mono-spaced fonts (which meant that all letters took up the same space -- an "W" was as wide as an "i"). Courier New is a mono-spaced font. In order to make things more readable, a double space would help readers know where sentences ended. However, in today's word processing, the letters in fonts are now proportional. Times New Roman, arguably the most used font today, is a proportionally-spaced font.
Even though single-spaces will suffice because of the newer fonts, I still think that a double-space makes the text overall more readable. That's kind of weird because I wasn't even around when typewriters were used. However, most style guides are saying that the single-space is correct. It's too bad I don't think I'll ever switch to the single-space.
I guess it's all due to personal preference. Since I've been seeing my own double-spaced typing ever since I started using the computer, anything else looks funny to me. Of course, I can't really tell unless I scrutinize the text, but upon closer examination, the single-space after the period always looks cramped and it irks me.
Arguing the other side, some people may think that the proportionally-spaced fonts makes the double-space obsolete. They think that the extra space between sentences looks strange and detracts from the flow of the text. Besides, it's more modern and it's one less keystroke between sentences! (In this paragraph, I used a single space after each period. It looks really weird to me.)
Hi. I'm Weird. I like single-spacing.
Hi. I'm Cool. I like double-spacing.
Since it's all up to personal preference, what do you prefer?
The single-space or the double-space?
If you want to find out more, just look it up on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sentence+spacing+after+period
If you don't know what Google is, then look it up on Google (and you're also probably retarded):
http://www.google.com/search?q=google
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